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Social historians have often provided interesting and useful information these days, but there's a big question they haven't even asked, let alone answered: In America, how long does it take for people or their actions, despised at the time, to become honored and respectable?
For instance, we recently saw and read accounts of Mormons celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of Salt Lake City by retracing their ancestors' handcart trek across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains.
Today, Mormons are perceived as exemplars of American virtue: stable, hard-working, family-oriented, etc. And that perception certainly seems to accord with facts, at least based on the LDS members I know.
But if we go back 150 years, we'd find out that the Mormons were fleeing into the deepest interior of North America because they were despised by mainstream America -- they were indeed chased out of New England, Missouri and Illinois by angry mobs of right-thinking Americans.
They were seen as isolated, clannish and power-hungry,
and accused of bizarre sexual practices. The Republican
party, when it was founded in 1854, was dedicated to
opposing the twin pillars of barbarism and ignorance:
slavery and polygamy.
To put it another way, Brigham Young may have been the most brilliant and successful colonial organizer in the history of the American West, but 150 years ago, he was the David Koreesh of the day -- the charismatic leader of a mysterious and despised religious cult.
Then as now, the federal government couldn't abide that, and in 1857 the U.S. Army was dispatched west to teach Young and the Mormons who was really in charge. Fortunately, the commander of that expedition, Albert Sidney Johnston (who opted for the Confederacy later and was killed at Shiloh) was in no hurry to confront the Mormons.
Johnston knew that Young would eventually realize he
could be outnumbered by the soldiers, and would negotiate
such accommodations as necessary. It's too bad that in
1993, Attorney General Janet Send in the tanks
Reno
wasn't as smart as Johnston.
Anyway, it apparently took the Mormons about 50 years to become respectable Americans -- Utah became a state in 1896.
Another hot news topic this summer is the 20th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley -- now an American icon, even honored on postage stamps.
But in his salad days, Elvis was seen as more dangerous even than Keith Richards, and politicians and preachers competed to find more lurid ways to denounce him, his music and his gyrations.
Somehow he made the transition to respectability quite quickly, though -- long before he died. Just think of the scandal now if an entertainer, stuffed to the gills on a huge variety of mind-altering drugs, went around the country giving Cadillacs to police officers, and got invited to the White House to receive a commission as a special narcotics officer.
The president who received Elvis at the White House,
Richard Nixon, also managed that transition during his own
lifetime, from only American president to resign in
disgrace
to respected elder statesman.
So Elvis and Nixon did it in 20 years or so, while the Mormons needed 50.
Maybe that reflects the faster pace of modern life, since other recent transformations have required about the same amount of time.
Last year provided two poignant examples for me and my
fellow baby boomers. The Democratic National Convention, in
Chicago for the first time since 1968, honored the
Chicago Seven
-- the same people who had been
pursued and clubbed by the police, then charged with
federal crimes back then.
And at the opening of the Olympics in Atlanta, Muhammad Ali represented America as he lit the torch.
The very same Muhammad Ali who was roundly denounced by
everyone respectable during my teenage days. He was mouthy
and uppity. He converted to Islam and changed his name from
Cassius Clay, an even greater annoyance to mainstream
America. He said his religious and other scruples forbade
him from going into the Army: No Vietcong ever called me
nigger.
Mainstream America hated him so much that he was stripped of title and couldn't box during the prime years of his career.
And there he was, standing for America at an international event. That made me feel good about the vindication of one of my boyhood heroes, but the question remains: How long does it take?
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